Before my surgery I went to see a plastic surgeon in town. We talked about reconstruction. I went by my intuition. There was not quite the silicone scare that there is now. But my thinking at the time was that my body was going to be going through so much with chemotherapy and surgery that I did not want to put my body through one more thing at that time. If I wanted it later on, I could have it later on. I just did not want to put anything foreign in my body. So I had a prosthesis. It fits into your bra, so you have a pouch in your bra that it fits into. But when you lean forward, it would lean with you so that it would go away from your skin, which I found to be uncomfortable. You have to be careful what clothes you wear. It's a little bit distressing finding clothes that are still a little bit feminine but not real low cut. So I went through that process for a while, and then about a year and a-half ago, they came out with a new prosthesis and now I have one. I have a piece of velcro that is on my skin and then I attach the prosthesis right to it, so it's attached to my body. They say you can sleep in it. I don't just so that it will last longer. It's made it a lot easier for clothes and just feeling good about myself. I mean, I don't think about it now like I did before, which is what you want to do. When you are diagnosed with cancer, that's all you think about. Of course, it is, because it's so scary.
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My little nephew, he was vacationing down in Florida, and Shawn said I want to go home to be with my Auntie. She's had cancer and they rode all the way on a motorcycle from Florida way up to Sault Ste. Marie. He's only about eight. He was really curious about Grandma's boob. He's a very friendly little guy, so he had a lot of little friends his age. So I was bending over and my boob fell out and their eyes got about this big. What's happening to Grandma? She's falling apart. The next day they called up some of their friends and they were all giving me a hug. They were playing a game to find out what side was the boob and what side wasn't the real thing. And all the laughs they gave me was just really therapeutic.

I asked my husband and he said "I don't care how many breasts you have, two, or three, or one." I said "Okay, fine then. I just won't do it." Because, I mean, just for looks you cannot tell what's prosthesis, right? I think another thing is the philosophy between east and west. The west society you can see all the advertisements, the girls wear swimming suits, you know. You have to have this sex appeal. The Orientals think different. Really, the function of breasts is to nurse the baby, so it didn't bother me at all. I think it might bother some American women.

He offered it to me on two separate occasions, and I turned it down both times. I am innately suspicious of putting anything in my body and I was not interested in, it just seemed like a bad idea to me. And I'm not sorry. I think I made the right decision.

I got to the point where I wouldn't even look at myself anymore, but it wasn't where I'd had the mastectomy. And this to me is funny because I had read so many books where the ladies would say, all right, I've decided today is the day where I'm going to look at my scar. And I thought, oh, cripe, I lifted the bandage up right away and looked and I thought, well, I've always been big busted. This is kind of nice. This is a cool feeling. As long as I have to do this, this is nice and cool for the summer. The part that bothered me was to see the one breast there. It wasn't the one that was missing, it was the one that was sort of just like hanging there all by itself, so lonesome. I decided that, gee, if this should happen again, maybe they'll consider taking the other one off. And if they had, maybe I wouldn't have gotten reconstruction, because that first summer it was very warm. I had a prosthesis. Any time above 70 degrees, I just couldn't throw that think far enough away. It was too hot, too heavy. I didn't mind going without it. I would wear bigger tops.

I had breast reconstruction done and I had it done using my own tissue. What they do is they take the tissue from the abdominal area and they transfer it up here and they create a new breast. And it's very extensive surgery. It's miraculous, and I'm really pleased. There might have been a possibility that could have been done at the time that I had the mastectomy. And it's not always easy to work out the complexities of the surgeon who is doing the mastectomy versus the plastic surgeon who is doing the reconstruction, but these things can be worked out and it is another option. You know, I went through it four years later and it was a twelve hour surgery, but the results of phenomenal. So it's good to know that if you lose your breast, you don't have to be without a breast forever. That they are doing things today with your own tissue that, you know, will give you back a breast and make you feel like a whole person again.